Under Armour is a brand founded on innovation. As UA’s senior director of innovation, Nick Cienski is part of a staff dedicated to making that concept part of the corporate culture. Meantime, he’s taking some time off to test some new UA equipment and raise awareness on human trafficking through the 6 Summits Challenge (6summitschallenge.com), an attempt to climb six of the world’s tallest mountains, beginning this month and continuing through October. While dressed in the latest UA outdoor climbing apparel, he talked recently about his day job.
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Everyone working this innovation space with us has to be comfortable, not only with the possibility of failure, but also with rolling the dice.”
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Photo by: UNDER ARMOUR
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Defining innovation: Certainly we debate build versus buy. We don’t have this philosophy of, “If it’s not invented here, we don’t do.” Our philosophy on innovation has been to develop products we can use broadly — not just for tip-of-the-spear athletes.
Fostering a culture of innovation: Everyone we have functioning within the innovation team is curious and creative. They are people who don’t tire of taking it apart and don’t think the job is finished because a product is good enough to go to market. At some point, we know we have to get to market, but we try to be relentless in tearing product apart again and again. … You have to be patient, and the ability to take risk has to be inherent.
Tangible results from the innovation lab: The two biggest are the infrared cold gear (apparel with a ceramic coating to prevent heat loss) and the MagZip (a zipper with a magnet strong enough to allow a one-handed zip.) Really, that came from Kevin [Plank, UA founder] asking why we were using the same old zippers. A lot of our people thought our zippers were OK, but if you start thinking about it differently, you come up with a new approach. For infrared gear, we thought about retention of heat and explored what they do about the problem in the car industry and aerospace; that’s where the inspiration for that came from. We have freedom to go other places to solve problems.
Continuing to innovate: Our team has authority to take on far-reaching projects. Other brands I’ve worked on, the innovations have been very commercially driven, so there’s an immediate need to produce for a collection that’s launching. We’re comfortable taking the long road if we need to. Kevin tells us, “Don’t be scared to fail,” and sometimes we learn when we do. He doesn’t mind paying the bill while all that happens
